Ship's cat
[2] Cats naturally attack and kill rodents[3] and adapt to new surroundings, which makes them suitable for service on a ship.
[citation needed] Bug Naked, Captain Kate McCue's sphynx cat, sails with her aboard the mega cruise ship Celebrity Beyond.
[12] Sometimes worshipped as deities, cats have long had a reputation as magical animals and numerous myths and superstitions sprang up among the unusually superstitious seafaring community.
Sometimes, fishermen's wives would keep black cats at home too, in the hope that they would be able to use their influence to protect their husbands at sea.
[16] Cats naturally react to barometric pressure changes, through which a keen observer can detect unusual behavior and predict an incoming storm.
[17] When Niagara was mined off the coast of New Zealand in 1940, Aussie was put in one of the lifeboats, but he jumped back aboard ship.
During the Second World War, he achieved worldwide fame after Prince of Wales carried Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic to NS Argentia, Newfoundland, in August 1941.
There he secretly met with the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt for several days in a secure anchorage resulting in the declaration of the Atlantic Charter.
[18] Blackie survived the sinking of Prince of Wales by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service later that year, and was taken to Singapore with the survivors.
[19] Camouflage was the name of the ship's cat aboard a US Coast Guard LST in the Pacific theater, WWII.
Picton Castle's role as a training ship resulted in Chibley being introduced to a large number of visitors and becoming a celebrity in her own right.
Convoy was listed in the ship's book and provided with a full kit, including a tiny hammock in which he slept.
[22] Early the next morning Empress of Ireland was struck by Storstad while steaming through fog near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River and rapidly sank, killing more than 1,000 people.
The cat and the rest of the crew marched in a New York ticker tape parade and toured the East Coast that summer.
Alvah's book North To The Night[26] describes his adventure in the ice with Halifax the cat, who ended up losing half an ear to frostbite.
Jenny was the name of the ship's cat aboard Titanic and was mentioned in the accounts of several of the crew members who survived the ocean liner's fateful 1912 maiden voyage.
[27] Stewardess Violet Jessop later wrote in her memoir that the cat "laid her family near Jim, the scullion, whose approval she always sought and who always gave her warm devotion".
Initially, Kiddo found the experience of air travel quite unpleasant and raised such a ruckus, the cat had to be placed in a gunny sack and suspended beneath the airship's gondola.
Eventually, the America's engines failed and the small crew and Kiddo abandoned the dirigible for lifeboats when they sighted the Royal Mail Ship Trent near Bermuda.
The Endurance was destroyed in 1915 after becoming trapped in pack ice and sank; Shackleton then ordered four sled dogs and Mrs. Chippy shot, as he had decided that the animals could not be properly cared for during the arduous journey ahead and would likely not survive.
Another cat who became a favourite of the ship's crew, he was known to be particularly intelligent and would shake the hands of strangers when they entered the wardroom.
When the surviving crew realised that their beloved ship's cat was not on board the lifeboat, they rowed around in the night until they finally heard a pitiful "miauu" in the distance.
Adopted by the Maine's executive officer, then-Commander Richard Wainwright, Tom was subsequently featured in animal-rights-related materials by the ASPCA and other humane societies, who praised the naval treatment of ship's cats as cared-for, working companion animals.
He has been the subject of a number of works of literature, and statues have been placed in his honour, including one that sits on a windowsill at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney.
Cossack herself was torpedoed and sunk a few months later, on 24 October, killing 159 of her crew, but Oscar again survived to be rescued, and was taken to Gibraltar.
By now known as Unsinkable Sam because of surviving the three ship sinkings, he was given a new job as shore duty mouse-catcher in the office buildings of the Governor of Gibraltar because he still had "six lives to go".
Notable examples include Cordwainer Smith's 1955 short story "The Game of Rat and Dragon"[44] and Andre Norton's 1968 novel The Zero Stone[45] featuring a telepathic mutant feline named Eet.
[49] On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data, second officer of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), owned a cat named Spot who he unsuccessfully attempted to train.
